Vim 7 introduces tab pages into vim and adds functions for navigating to different tabs (e.g. gt or :tab). You might however want to map some of those functions to separate keys. To do so, add the desired snippet to your vimrc.

Please note, that some of the mappings used here, might interfere with existing functionalities, like

You can open a new tab with ctrl-t, go forward through the tabs with ctrl-tab
and backwards with ctrl-shift-tab. This way of navigating resembles the way it
is done in Firefox.
You can also use <C-PageDown> and <C-PageUp> to cycle through tabs which
works by default in Vim and Firefox.

For opening and closing tabs, you can also add the <C-Insert> and <C-Delete>
mappings like this:

nnoremap <C-Insert> :tabnew<CR>
nnoremap <C-Delete> :tabclose<CR>

Note, that those keys are only used in normal mode, because in insert and visual mode they already have a function.

Those mappings use the easily-reached "t" key in combination with the well known "hjkl" navigation keys in normal mode that move the cursor left, down, up or right. 'tj' moves to the next tab, 'tk' moves to the previous tabpage while 'th' and 'tl' move to the leftmost/rightmost tabpage.

The second autocommand creates a new last tabpage for any buffer that is
created (e.g. when using :e foobar, the current buffer will remain
visible in the current tabpage and the file foobar will be opened in a new
tabpage and Vim goes to that tabpage.)